Fedora 7 or 8 WMP54GS ndiswrapper

[travismc1]

I just bought a new system with SATA drive. Cannot get Fedora 6 to "see" the sata drive so I stuck in the Fedora 7disk then tried Fedora 8 disk. When I try to use the "built in" module for my BROADCOM 4318 CHIPSET (LINKSYS WMP54GS with Speedbooster version 4), I can "activate" or ifup but I get nowhere. With Fedora Core 6, I could "blacklist bcm43xx" install ndiswrapper and use wmp54gs.inf.

With Fedora 7 and 8, I try to blacklist the built-in modules but when I "ndiswrapper -l" I get DRIVER INSTALLED (wmp54gs) using alternate driver SSB or BROADCOM43xx or "the built-in". It's frustrating because NDISWRAPPER worked fine in FC6. Neither Fedora 7 nor 8 seem to want to play nice. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to debug the system. Or recommend a better card for wireless. My internet service is through a wireless provider so I really need a good LINUX card.

[valemon]

Yesterday I installed ndiswrapper in my Fedora 8. What to do:
Uninstall completely any previous versions of ndiswrapper.
Download the latest stable one from here

Now we are going to remove Fedora 8 in-built drivers

rmmod b43
rmmod ssb

blacklist the modules

echo "blacklist b43" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
echo "blacklist ssb" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Unpack and install ndiswrapper

tar -zxvf ndiswrapper-1.50.tar.gz
cd ndiswrapper-1.50
make distclean
make
make install)

Then install the Windows drivers

ndiswrapper -i driver.inf

Finally

depmod -a
modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -ma

This should get you going.

[travismc1]

I followed the procedure and everything worked fine. Thank you. If anyone reads this and can answer....

What does "make distclean" do?

and

What does "depmod -a" do?

Of course the real trick may have been the updated ndiswrapper files.

These are two steps that I had never done before. But thanks all the same....

[valemon]

Glad to help you travismc1.

If you type `make distclean', then make not only removes the same files as does `make clean' but also the `TAGS', `Makefile', and `config.status' files. (Although it is not evident, this makefile (and `config.status') is generated by the user with the configure program, which is provided in the tar distribution, but is not shown here.)

also

man <<command>>

is really helpful

[jburke71]

I got a warning while compiling ndiswrapper on Fedora 8 ( Linux 2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ).

*** WARNING: This kernel seems to use 4K stack size option (CONFIG_4KSTACKS); many Windows drivers will not work with this option enabled. Disable CONFIG_4KSTACKS option, recompile and install kernel

I'm going to ignore it for now and see if my driver works, but I thought I would mention it. Did anyone else get this warning?

Jason

[valemon]

I got this warning also but I had no problem running wireless. Try to get this working and post here any error output. Make sure you are using latest stable version of ndiswrapper

[travismc1]

I have always seen the comment about some drivers use 8K Stacks. I think it's a blanket statement meant to inform what could be a problem after the fact. WMP11 by linksys and WMP54GS both work as is. My problem was that I hadn't tried the latest stable ndiswrapper/make distclean/depmod -a. Everything else I had done had always worked before.

[BobLfoot]

Tried all of valemon's steps and ran into a problem with not having a link to kernel source when trying to do the make distclean. Found an NDISWRapper installer for 1.48 on Sourceforge and it clued me into what libs I was missing. Was finally able to uninstall 1.48 and install 1.51 and use it on my 4318 windows XPsp2 driver. I know have a wlan0 network connection that won;t activate and Network manager is I use it cannot connect either.

Any ideas as to how to proceed next for a real linux noob.

[valemon]

iwlist wlan0 scan

What is the output of this?

[BobLfoot]

Two stupid mistakes. I forgot to blacklist the ssb and then forgot the 0x when entering my key.

Works now.